A Dark Anniversary at The Circus

How are we back here again?

Today, many of us are asking, "How the hell are we back here again? How could people forget how terrible it was the first time?" As if amnesia isn't this country's superpower.

Five years ago, on January 20th, 2020, the CDC reported the first laboratory-confirmed case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus in the U.S. I had to look it up. One of the most consequential tragedies of our lifetime, which cost the lives of so many, and yet we don't really mark these important dates in our culture. Still no official National Day of Mourning for Covid. We were all just forced to carry the losses alone and throw the rest into a communal memory hole. No wonder we still feel so depleted.

Like many of you, I'm overwhelmed with how we're gonna get through this political circus again. But today, I'm not interested in clutching my pearls at the TV. There’s no need to watch the Bond villain speeches and repost the Nazi salutes. This system wants us exhausted by design. Just because other people turned over the country doesn’t mean I need to turn over my central nervous system. There is no virtue in burning myself out.

Instead, I'm lighting a candle for the two grandmothers whose funerals I watched through FaceTime during lockdown and meditating on where the fuck I got the strength for that. Gonna have a little cry, make a little soup, and keep it pushin’.

Sometimes the only way to move forward is to pause and remember.

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Poems, essays, and sex as political resistance in my books Analog Cruising and POST.